John, what do you mean "catalog woodcuts"? John, for centuries prints were made by cutting the image into wood blocks which were set up with the type to illustrate printed materials, books, newspapers, catalogs, etc. Many of the earlier angling books contain such illustrations. I actually...

Description of flies from 1910 Mills Catalog, color plate from Streamcraft. Both the color plate(s) and catalog woodcuts were used for decades.

bb, I hope you will remember to take those with you this Spring to NW WI outing. <hint! hint!> Where would those flies have been made? per dozen... $1.50. How the hell did they make money???? John Mills imported flies from England, the world supplier of commercial flies for many years, but Alfred M...

Those look like the earlier packages but it's hard to date them with much accuracy. I wonder what the "N" stamp means, possibly "Nylon" as the later, post WWII, snelled flies were on nylon? But these look to be pre-nylon. Mills was in business for so long that a lot of their pack...

Mills' Light Stream Flies date back to at least 1894 and perhaps even earlier. Several pages of the 1894 catalog are reproduced in Great Fishing Tackle Catalogs of the Golden Age and they are pictured on page 99 of that delightful book. For many years the Mills catalogs contained beautiful color pla...

J.W. Dunne was quite the inventor/thinker. He designed early aircraft and then went on to publish books about dream theory and one called An Experiment with Time that even Einstein had trouble understanding, or so the story goes. Dunne's flies were sold by various companies such as Hardy, as were th...

Original "COCH-Y-BONDHU" beetles, size 10 and 14, superimposed on the 1937 Allcock's Catalog. They appear to be made from an early plastic material and have a metal flake paint.

One of the books I "grew up" on was American Trout Fishing: by Theodore Gordon and a Company of Anglers . Originally published in a deluxe edition in 1965 as The Gordon Garland to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Gordon's death, the trade edition followed in 1966. Edited by my good frie...

You have the same hackle twice there John. Blue Hawk and Merlin are the same bird. Yorkshire colloquial speech is sometimes hard to fathom. You need to come back over for a few days fishing! Rob, we'll have to take the Blue Hawk and Merlin issue up with HW Cooper! Did you notice that one of packets...

Packets.jpg Partridge Hackles.jpg These are a selection of materials envelopes from the Henry Walbran Cooper Collection. All have materials in them and the materials are in pristine condition with no moth damage. Some of the envelopes are repurposed postal envelopes and can be dated by their stamps...